The split tree that missed the shelter and other tales of Monday's storms in north Alabama

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Up in far north Madison County, where vast plowed fields are broken only by tree lines and homes and where the roads have names like Charity, Butter and Egg, and Bobo Section, people know what to do and what to say about bad spring weather.

"About 10 of us were in there," Benny Moore said Tuesday as he pointed at an old in-ground tornado shelter on Charity Lane. "Some young guys cleaned it out for us."

Moore shook his head as he pointed at the stump of a big oak tree behind the shelter. It was split by the Monday night storm, and one half fell on one side of the shelter while one half fell on the other side.

About 50 yards away, the same wind sheered the top off a 60-foot-tall concrete silo and left a pile of rubble on the ground. The silo hadn't been used for years, but had stood since 1970.

"At least nobody got hurt," A.J. Hereford said about a mile away as he cleaned up two storm-trashed sheds behind his house. One shed was flattened, the other's roof was blown away. "Horse tack, mostly," he said when asked what was in the flattened shed.

Hereford watched the storm from his garage on Butter and Egg Road. His house came through fine, but Hereford was working hard Tuesday to clear the fields of anything he didn't want his horses to eat. He has no electrical power beyond the generator that is powering his refrigerator and television set. The TV is for weather watching Tuesday night.

District 1 Madison County Commissioner Roger Jones said there was no loss of life or injuries in this farming area, "but we've got a lot of work ahead of us. Mostly trees down." Nearby District 4 Commissioner Phil Vandiver said people poured over the area "like ants" as soon as the sun rose.

Jones and Vandiver will have to haul fallen and broken trees to a central site for disposal, but property owners first have to get the debris to the side of the road.

People in north Madison County know, too, or think they know why tornadoes hit this area with scary regularity. "It's flat," said Sean Summers as he took a break from cutting and hauling limbs. "There's hills to the north of us and hills to the south of us. This is flat, and tornadoes love flat ground."

Summers said he wasn't at home when the storm passed Monday night. He was engaged in another tradition hereabouts. "We went chasing it," he said with a grin.

Was it rough? "It was pretty rough," Summers said. As rough as the tornadoes of April 27, 2011? "This was a cake walk compared to that," he said.